Mainz

The flight from Singapore to Frankfurt was delayed in pretty much every way possible. First, we couldnt leave cos the pilots needed updated maps to be faxed from Sydney to Singapore. Then when they arrived, Singapores fax machine had run out of toner. Then after 12 hours of flying around bad weather in the Agean sea or something, someone had nicked our parking spot in the Frankfurt terminal.

Finally on the ground in Germany, I walked through the VERY VERY QUIET Frankfurt airport (it looks like the U2 clip for Beautiful Day, seriously), navigated a maze of escalators and trains that depart every 240 seconds between different buildings, and finally made it onto the U-Barn out of the airport and towards Mainz.

Everything was going perfectly and I was very proud of my efforts, I had even got to flex some grade 8 German on a ticket officer dude. So it was disappointing when I finally arrived in Mainz and discovered that the mobile number I had for Michelle wouldnt connect.

After an hour of wandering around town trying to look natural while working out what the hell to do, I finally bailed up some German lady who spoke a little English at the customer service counter of some random important looking business. She pointed out that I had written the first two digits of Michelles phone number in the wrong order, so soon enough I got through to her and she arrived on a big blue bicycle in true European style. She bought me a phone (for 10 euros), email me if you want the number

Yesterday we did some shopping, and picked up a true European bounty for EU26.97, part of which is seen here:

A mere 10 of those Euros went towards the bottle of Jager (found on the shelf next to the cereal), we also got a free Ice Bucket. I celebrated by knocking back a refreshing glass of "Schwip Schwap", which seems to be Fanta mated with Coke mated with the leftovers of the self-serve tray at Sizzler. I also picked up this fancy watch.

Slept for a good 12 hours. Apparently today we're going on a 20km bike ride to a winery with Michelles lab supervisors. Noone has explained to me how we're supposed to ride back when we're drunk off our asses. And just to add an element of danger, Ive been loaned a very expensive looking bike on which to make the journey.